Noble Grape Festa Brew

Hey I just bottled a batch of Festa Brew's Brown Ale I got from my local Noble Grape store here in Fredericton New Brunswick. I am just curious if anybody else has tried this product, and if so, how long they left it in each of the stages (primary, secondary, bottle) before drinking, and how the product turned out.

My college roommate got a festa brew IPA from his parents for xmas last year. We did a 2 week primary then bottled. It was a decent beer. People who tried it liked it. For an IPA I thought it was lacking. If you have access to better yeast I would use it. The yeast that came with it seemed suspect.

The Festa Brew kits are very good quality. I've made the West Coast IPA with great results, and a few of my buddies did a few, including the brown ale with good results. I've got a cream ale that i've yet to do. As for time for the stages, i just followed the directions as close as possible...about 7-10 i think for primary?? maybe same for the secondary...its been a while..

According to the steps with my kit you do the priming right before you bottle .. Then bottle it wait 14 days no sooner. after 14 days must keep beer cold from geting spoiled . says aging doesnt make better beer . when it comes to home brew!! must be bottled after 10 days early as 7 no later or beers bad !!!

does anyone know if beer will stay ok in pop bottles noble grapes said it would, but i hear it wont carbonate right and gets out air

mjrb2004 said:

According to the steps with my kit you do the priming right before you bottle .. Then bottle it wait 14 days no sooner. after 14 days must keep beer cold from geting spoiled . says aging doesnt make better beer . when it comes to home brew!! must be bottled after 10 days early as 7 no later or beers bad !!!

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There's so much info in here to the contrary! The beer is sealed,it won't spoil if you age it longer. IDK where they get that stuff. I've done it since the beginning,beers are fine. So aging does make better beer. That's totally absurd. I've had beers in primary for 4 weeks,bottles for 7-8 weeks. Nada spoilage,not a single one. Talk about out dated info.
But yeah,prime in a separate bucket when you're ready to bottle. Or use cooper's carb drops in the bottles. Both ways work fine. Try to get your info here with regard to times & such. Those kit instructions are pretty general,not even specific to any appreciable degree. Blows my mind that they're like that.

Howdy mjrb2004, good to see another Nova Scotian!

i agree with unionrdr, instructions on festa brew kits are extremely outdated. Following the instructions will undoubtly make OK beer but will certainly not make great beer. the instructions were designed to service such a broad spectrum of people, beer styles and brewing conditions. I'm not knocking noble grape either because they are pretty much my only LHBS but their advice is the same way. The "play it safe" approach. For example "the beer must be racked off the yeast in the primary after 7 days" Now there is some truth to that in some circumstances ie: yeast autolysis, or off-flavors from the trub. But for the majority of the time those factors are none existent.
I always primary for a month give or take a week, regardless if i'm doing a festa brew or any other. Secondary time is based on the the type of beer, desired clarity and other factors such as dry hopping or stabilizing.

So to sum up, the instructions are a great way for a novice brewer to make foolproof beer his/her first time but once you get a pretty good grasp on it, i suggest ditching the instuctions and using Homebrewtalk as your complete resource guide. This site will never let you down, I can almost guarantee it.

and mjrb2004 don't use pop bottles for long time storage, the plastic believe it or not is permeable by oxygen. i suggest going to a couple bars around dartmouth here and asking them to buy their bottles. 10c a piece. I do that frequently from a bar just down the street. and go on a monday or tuesday then you know they haven't got crud and dried **** in them. makes them a lot easier to clean and sanitize.